Joint European Compound Library

Joint European Compound Library: a unique and diverse collection of compounds

The Joint European Compound Library (JECL) forms the core of the EU Lead Factory. It contains a diverse range of high quality compounds that are synthetically tractable and that can make excellent starting points for drug discovery projects. These compounds come from the proprietary collections of the seven established pharmaceutical (EFPIA) partners of the European Lead Factory and from the project’s own synthetic chemistry programme, and are in general not commercially available. The European Lead Factory provides a unique framework that enables availability of these compound collections to the wider scientific community.

The JECL was initially established with over 300,000 compounds contributed by the seven EFPIA partners from their own libraries, and this set is referred to as the EFPIA collection. A detailed analysis (Besnard et al, 2015, DDT) revealed that this collection has an attractive physicochemical profile (average MW of 350 Da and logP of 2-3) and that the compounds are predicted to show activity in a diverse array of biological targets. The benefit of bringing subsets from multiple companies into a single collection was also apparent with each company’s subset exploring a distinct area of chemical space while local similarity within each subset allows initial structure–activity relationships (SARs) to be investigated.

A key project goal of the EU Lead Factory is to add another 200,000 innovative compounds through its own synthetic chemistry programme. These compounds are carefully selected for novelty, drug-like properties, diversity and synthetic tractability (click here to see the detailed criteria). Library design ideas are crowdsourced from academic and industry chemists across Europe and the compounds are synthesised by the Public Chemistry Consortium. By January 2016, about 80,000 newly synthesized compounds have been added. A recent analysis of the first 50,000 compounds proves that they are extending into chemical space not previously accessible (Karawajczyk et al, 2015, DTT). Compared to other libraries that are available commercially or though similar initiatives, these novel compounds are distinguished by a higher 3D character (fraction sp3 >0.4 for 86% of their library cores) and structurally distinct scaffolds (Tanimoto coefficient <0.2 for intercollection similarity). Together, the EFPIA and Public compounds collections make up the JECL, with currently >450,000 lead-like compounds available for screening.

Drug targets selected by the EU Lead Factory are screened against all compounds in the JECL that are available. Note that the JECL is accessible to the screening centres within the consortium without requiring the disclosure of a compound’s structure. This approach guarantees confidentiality, while it allows a wide range of commercially sensitive compounds to be screened against potential drug targets.

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The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n' 115489, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 / 2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in kind contribution.